6. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the role of adverse childhood experiences in driving Welsh Government policy on children? OAQ(5)0150(CC)

I thank the Member for Torfaen for her question. We are working collaboratively across portfolios, including education, health and children and communities, to improve the well-being of children and young people. Preventing and mitigating the impact of ACEs can have a significant effect to benefit families and individuals, as well as the wider community.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. The Children, Young People and Education Committee recently had a useful briefing on adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs, from Public Health Wales. Clearly, recognition of particular ACEs has a role to play in ensuring the best possible outcomes for our children and young people, but there are many issues that can affect a child’s well-being, and it is a great concern to me that neglect is not recognised as an ACE. This is despite neglect being recognised as an ACE in North America and despite the fact that neglect continues to be the most common reason for child protection action in Wales. What assurances can you give, Cabinet Secretary, that the focus the Welsh Government is placing on ACEs will not lead to less focus on tackling neglect and other issues that will impact on a child’s well-being?

I thank the Member for a very important question in the supplementary that she raises with me. Can I give reassurance to the Member that this isn’t one or the other? This is about a holistic view and about engaging young people and their families? ACEs do provide one part of that. If we take the issue of ACEs, and the balance of two of the ACEs that are considered, which are any one of physical or mental abuse, both of those possibly relate to an outcome of neglect. Therefore, I wouldn’t say that we’re not on the same page here—I think it’s about definition. I would be very happy to meet with the Member and somebody from Public Health Wales to work through this issue to give the Member reassurance that, actually, this isn’t one area that we are neglecting—this is absolutely fundamental to making sure we can have the right benefits for young people as we move forward.

Cabinet Secretary, less than 1 per cent of Welsh NHS expenditure is targeted towards child and adolescent mental health services, yet 5,400 children and young people are referred to local primary mental health support services for assessment each year, with a further 2,355 waiting several months for their first out-patient appointment. Latest figures now show that 73 children and adolescents are waiting 26 weeks and beyond for treatment. At such an impressionable age, and when we talk about childhood experience, do you not agree with me that the earlier that we can get intervention and good treatment for our children, the greater outcomes are likely to be? Therefore, will you commit here today to working with the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport to bring down these unacceptable waiting times?

I’m grateful that the Member is now on board. I work with the health Cabinet Secretary already, as I do with all Cabinet colleagues, including the education Cabinet Secretary. We must get upstream of some of these issues. We’ve got to tackle the here and now, and the mental health cases that you talk about, particularly in young people, are ones that trouble me too, but, actually, what we’ve got to do is get to the prevention end of this and make sure that the experiences of young people don’t lead them into mental health trauma later on in life. So, I would encourage the Member, in her questions in the future also, to think about how we collectively have a non-political view on how we move resources from the critical end into the prevention end. It is an important process in where we’re going to be. There’s only one pot of money, and we’ve got to get in early on to make sure the young people she talks about aren’t duly affected in the long term in terms of adulthood.